Author: Arnaud Le Hors
Date: Monday, 9 Dec 1996
Here are two snapshots showing what it looks like to run an application over the web, embedded within Netscape.
The first snapshot shows a Motif application:
Note that for some technical reason this application cannot run on our web server, so in this example although the application was launched from a CGI script ran by our web server, the application was actually running on another machine. This simply means you are completely free to use your resources as you want.
Isn't that cool ?...
But here is more. The next snapshot shows Microsoft Excel running in Netcape!
And this is not a fake. Believe me, this is real. The trick is that Excel is run on a NT box, through WinCenter, as an X client then. Isn't that really cool ?...
Feel like clicking on these buttons, don't you ? Of course, that's what's too bad about these snapshots, they do not allow you to play with these applications as I did when I made these snapshots. That's the coolest part of this, you can interact with the applications just like you would do if they were running locally!
Two other things these snapshots do not show are the security and LBX. The new security extension allows to give access to an application without having to open your X server with an "xhost +..." command. In these examples, the applications were given an untrusted client key which allowed them to connect to the display with limited access. They could not steal keystrokes from another application for instance. Also, by adding a simple parameter in the HTML document I could make them connect trough LBX to get better performance when run from a distant host.
Want to get your hands on all this ? To do so you'll have to wait for Broadway!